


Give Me Love (La Petite Morte Remix)

by unveiled



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Death, Drug Use, M/M, Mythology - Freeform, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-03
Updated: 2014-08-03
Packaged: 2018-02-11 15:38:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2073684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unveiled/pseuds/unveiled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Give Me Love (La Petite Morte Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [velvetcadence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/velvetcadence/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Give Me Love](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029985) by [velvetcadence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/velvetcadence/pseuds/velvetcadence). 



Charles writes down their names on sheets of paper: one sheet for each name, conjured up in his mind. He writes each name slowly, meticulously, and folds up the sheets twice. He tucks them gently into manila folders, the same bleached-bone white as the papers, slotted into miles upon miles of filing cabinets that clatter under his hands.

When he opens his eyes again, it's to the noon sun warming his sheets in long, bright rectangles of light. His wings twitch on his back, like its own creature, fanning out to shade his eyes from the sun. The feathers are the colour of a cloudy night sky, tipped with an unearthly sheen.

Hank has prepared his usual: a syringe and a vial of his best brew, arranged on a tray left on his bedside table. A cup of tea sits to the left of the tray. He touches the porcelain with the tips of his fingers—still warm. Raven's been by, then.

He makes sure to drink it, savouring every drop, before the day's hit.

***

Charles is good at remembering. He was going to be a teacher, once upon a time, swapping a laboratory for a classroom. He _is_ a teacher, at least for a semester, and he remembers all of his children's names and faces and their infuriating tics.

He still finds himself in classrooms, but no longer to draw double helixes on blackboards or teach giggling teenagers mnemonic devices. Now he walks by bullet shells and rubble on silent feet, attending to the last trickle of seconds of someone's life. Everybody's lives.

He remembers all of them.

***

Charles floats on the high of Hank's chemical ingenuity, even as pieces of him swarm out into the world every second of every hour of every day. He tries to be completely present when he meets one of his former students again. They deserve that much from him, at least.

History marches on outside the mansion, but within its walls and its vast grounds, Time slips off her shoes and curls up on the Persian rug before the study's fireplace. The roses lose their dewy blush under Charles's touch, but do not wither. There are bottles of wine in Charles's cellar that will never reach their best. Charles marks the years with Hank, and Raven, and one other.

***

For a long time, he thinks about blaming Erik.

What good will it do, though? He is, after all, the one who wanted to live.

He thinks about giving it up too, of driving the metaphorical scythe between his ribs. But someone has to do the job, and he can't bear the thought of handing it to someone who won't care enough to remember.

***

Raven comes to see him on the 28th of every month, wrinkling her nose at the mouldering carpets in the east wing of the mansion. Today her hair is the colour of a warning beacon, styled into luxurious curls about her face.

She unboxes a tart of apples and blackberries, glistening under a shell of sugar. Charles makes his monthly attempts at cleaning up: he sets a table with a clean, white tablecloth and the family's best silverware, buffed by Hank's obliging hands. 

"I didn't figure you to be a Miss Havisham," Raven says. Her tone is light, but her mouth is unsmiling. There are new wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.

"Perhaps I'll move on to being Bertha Mason next." Charles cuts a slice of tart and places it on his sister's plate, before serving himself. "I've always fancied a little pyromania."

Her fingers tighten around her fork. "It's been ten years."

"This isn't the kind of work that gets easier, Raven." He lifts a forkful of the confectionery to his mouth. His tongue prickles at the taste, cold and sour-sweet, and his wings shiver. He swallows the bite quickly.

"You still get to be part of this world, just like everyone else, just like you wanted. For fuck's sakes, Charles, there's nothing stopping you from walking out there and, I don't know, saving corgis or something." She takes a sip of her cup, then scrunches her face. "This tea is completely tasteless — did you make it?"

"No, but I must've held the pot a little too long," he sighs, and tastes the tea. It may as well be water. "I think that's a rather pointed reminder that I'm _not_ like everyone else, no?"

"You're still human where it matters." Her gaze is cool, laced with enough pity to make him look away. "That's the problem."

***

It's nice, sometimes, when they're at peace and ready to move on. It happens more often than he expects — death is the only respite from pain left, for some. He lays his hands on the brows of kings and paupers with equal kindness, ushering them into the dark. He doesn't know where they go next, and doesn't care. It's not up to him to decide.

Charles walks on the shoreline of a sea heaving up in waves over homes and families. Half a world away, he crouches next to a woman lying on a pavement, as a motorcycle speeds away with her purse and her murderers. On the slopes of a mountain, he grips the chilled hands of a man exhaling his last breath into ice and snow. The black feathers of his wings flutter in the wind of a hurricane.

The cabinets in his mind fill up by the second, stretching into infinity. Charles curls up on his bed in the mansion in Westchester and feels Hank's drug course through his body, blunting the bloodied edges of his memories.

***

He remembers the car with the drunken driver, the rain seeping through the cracks on his windscreen and mixing with blood. _His_ blood.

Charles only meant to say goodbye, then, to say that he wished they had more time together. Erik's eyes were angry and so horribly sad, and he knew then and he knows now that Erik's love is no fleeting thing.

He said, as he was dying, "I wish I could live for you."

***

Hank used to be a physicist and engineer, until the illness that took his life. _Would_ have taken his life, if it wasn't for a moment of weakness on Charles's part.

Now he lives in that moment like the air inside a bubble, contained within Charles's home. Hank seems content enough with his nest of laboratories and the kitchen and the library, and Charles prudently leaves it be. He can wait. One day, Hank will ask to be released.

***

He senses Erik at the edge of his perception, reaching out across the universe in plumes of awareness. The feeling hooks Charles in place, orienting him helplessly in Erik's direction — just as much of a fool in love now as the young man who invited Erik into his bed and the rest of his life.

Something of what Erik was remains in his fleshly body, something more than mortal. Erik used to simulate the sound of a heartbeat in the nights they spent together, and it comforts Charles to know that Erik's new heart may beat till the end of time itself.

Erik comes to see him in the seventh year. Charles says, "I'm not ready to see you yet."

A wary look crosses Erik's face. "Are you going to punch me again?"

"No," Charles says, and closes the door. He waits a long time before Erik's leggy shadow crosses the gates of the mansion, leaving him alone once more.

***

Twelve years after Charles's death, Erik stands at his doorstep again. Erik is wearing a navy suit with a silk tie, the same one Charles once tossed onto a hotel floor in New York with Erik's shirt, careless with wanting.

"I'm done waiting."

"You can't undo this, Erik," Charles says.

"Yes. I know." Erik's eyes are gentle, strange and startling. He reaches for Charles and grips one of the black wings with a strong hand. "But I can do what I should've done from the beginning: ask to share a lifetime with you."

 

**END**


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